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Sleep Token

Take Me Back To Eden

Written by: PP on 20/11/2023 15:19:02

If you haven't stumbled upon Sleep Token over the last few years, you've been living under a rock. The British rock/metal band has been breaking all sorts of boundaries through their messianic sermons disguised as songs, where their third album "Take Me Back To Eden" appears to be their final breakthrough in their inevitable rise towards festival headlining slots in the coming years. So unorthodox is their genre-blurring, eccentric soundscape that you'll be hard-pressed to come up with any contemporary comparisons to their art. Because that is what this album is: art.

The best description I've been able to come up with so far is crunchy experimental nu-metal Deftones-style in a marriage with Ghost's pop fervour and avant-garde ideals where elements of dance music, ambiance, rock, and r&b are mixed in seamlessly at will. The music is simultaneously punishingly heavy, soothing, frightening, and poignant all the while being enormously atmospheric and calmly executed. The compositions are beautiful, as exemplified by far-reaching, expansive songs like "The Summoning", which will lead the band to take over arena headlining slots with certainty in the future.

The band toys with clever soundscapes on noirish songs like "Aqua Regia", a slower and quieter piece that feels like an underwater ambiance delivered as a sermon of sorts. Its polar opposite "Vore" is aghast with ravaging screams and heavy guitar distortion, showcasing their metallic edge, which draws from metalcore bands as well as the most raucous moments of Deftones records. Put that next to the vocoder and hip-hop/r&b-inspired vocal delivery of "Ascensionism" and you'll meet a starker contrast than you'll ever have heard before.

Yet somehow it works majestically. The pure elegance of their heavy/soft dynamic is something else. Whether it's the howling clean vocals of the crunchy "Chokehold" or the progressive masterclass of the latter experimentation, Sleep Token delivers one of the most unique records in a decade and one that deserves to be heard far and wide. When people speak of music as an art form, they inherently mean records like this one. It's a timeless classic that will be remembered as one of the very best from this era.

Download: Chokehold, Ascensionism, The Summoning,
For the fans of: Deftones, Ghost, Spiritbox
Listen: Facebook

Release date 19.05.2023
Spinefarm